Hiring should adhere to home-rule spirit

Given the furor over nepotism and cronyism in Luzerne County government, it is unlikely that more than 50,000 county residents would have cast votes in favor of a home-rule charter in 2010 if that charter exempted more than 40 percent of county employees from merit-selection hiring standards.

But two years later and nearly one year into home rule, that is where the county government finds itself.

The charter as written required the new county council to draft a personnel code ensuring that employees would be "appointed and promoted on the basis of merit and fitness as demonstrated by valid and reliable examinations, other objective evidence of competence, and/or other relevant factors."

The only employees exempt from that process under the charter were to be the heads of six executive departments, the county solicitor and public defender, all of whom would be chosen by the appointed county manager with confirmation by the council. Any other new hires would be subject to the new code.

In drafting the code, the council set up a system of advertising, testing and ranking that the county Human Resources Department would use to determine the three top candidates, whose names would be forwarded to the department head making the hire. However, the council also inserted language in the code that exempted non-hourly wage positions as defined under the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act from the process, which in effect means that approximately 360 middle-management jobs could be filled without following the personnel code.

Add to those jobs the 300 court-related positions that the county judiciary maintains are beyond the reach of the charter's provisions and 44 percent of the county's 1,500 jobs can now be filled at the whim of department heads or the county's judges.

That's certainly not the merit-based system that voters or the drafters of the home-rule charter had in mind.

County Manager Robert Lawton proposed last month that the code be amended, but asked that he still be allowed some flexibility in filling middle-management positions without hewing to the personnel code. Lawton quickly withdrew his proposal when it caused an uproar among some county council members and home-rule activists.

That left county government in a standoff over how it should proceed in filling empty department head slots and middle management positions as they become open.

We believe the charter as originally conceived struck the right balance, giving the county manager the freedom to choose top managers, but requiring merit selection for all other hires.

That concept, as approved by the voters, should be given time to work.

The county council should revisit the personnel code, remove the exemption for middle managers and fully implement the will of the people.

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